How to provide useful feedback for a leader's 360 survey

Participating in a leader's 360 survey gives you the opportunity to support that leader's ongoing development. Your unique perspective and experience helps them to identify strengths and areas for improvement — that's why you've been chosen! 

Most questions in the survey will be scale-based. You'll be shown a statement and select how much you agree or disagree with it. There might also be some free-text questions, which give you the chance to provide feedback in your own words.  

Where there are free-text questions, we recommend using the SBI or Situation-Behaviour-Impact model. 

SBI feedback model 

Established by The Creative Centre for Leadership, the SBI model helps ensure your feedback is useful and clearly understood.  

The SBI model is made up of three parts:

• Situation: Describe the situation, including the time and place.  This situation should be one you personally experienced, not one you heard about from someone else.  
• Behaviour: Describe the behaviour you observed. State the facts and avoid opinions. 
• Impact: Describe the impact of the behaviour on you and any others present. Did it have a positive or negative impact? 

Examples of SBI in practice 

#1: Negative impact 

• Situation: “Each person in our team is supposed to have a 1 on 1 with the leader at least once a fortnight. This is to catch up on how we’re doing, any blockers etc..." 
• Behavior: "...the leader hasn't booked a 1 on 1 with me for three months" 

• Impact: "...this makes me feel unsupported and not a priority." 

  
  

#2: Positive impact 

• Situation: “There were some redundancies a few months ago, which means other team members – including myself, have taken on extra work. I ended up working a lot of extra hours...” 
• Behavior: "...the leader noticed I was online a lot outside of normal work hours and booked a check in with me to discuss why. They ended up speaking to some other leaders in the business about extending project deadlines so we can make people's workloads more reasonable.” 
• Impact: "...this made me feel like my leader cared about my wellbeing and reminded me that its OK to speak up about workload problems.” 

Be honest and respectful  

Remember to be honest when you give feedback. This allows the leader to build a realistic picture of how their role and approach influences and affects the people they interact with.   

Receiving feedback can be nerve-wracking for some leaders though. So always make sure comments are respectful, free from judgment and come from wanting to support the leader’s development.